44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 27, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
As I said, we are in favour of the principle. There is a factual problem with his question. He is saying that the program is for every child in Quebec or for the parents of every child in Quebec. That is not true.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer looked into this, and he showed that Quebec will receive only half as much as the rest of Canada will be getting. Quebec is being discriminated against. All we are asking is to drop this super closure motion that the NDP supported so that we can improve this bill in committee. If we had been able to amend it and improve it in committee, we would be voting in favour of the bill now. However, the government imposed super closure on a bill that is out of touch with reality and does not provide fair compensation. If we had had a chance to do the work to ensure that we were not getting just half of what we are entitled to, then we would have voted in favour of the bill. There are consequences to supporting super closure.
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Mr. Speaker, before I start, I would like to seek unanimous consent from the House to split my time.
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- Oct/27/22 5:41:45 p.m.
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Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Kingsway.
I am delighted to enter into this debate. I have been listening all day to members in the House speak to Bill C-31. What are we talking about with Bill C-31? We are talking about making sure that families with incomes of less than $90,000, and with children under 12 who do not have dental coverage or insurance elsewhere, get oral health support. That is what we are talking about in this bill.
We are also talking about making sure that low-income individuals whose incomes are less than $20,000, and low-income couples and families whose incomes are less than $35,000, get a one-time housing benefit of $500. That is what we are talking about in Bill C-31.
When I listened to members in the House today, I went through a range of emotions, from anger to dismay to sadness. I heard the Conservatives say over and over again that children who need dental care support and who do not have dental care support should not get it. The Conservatives are opposed to this bill, and they used all kinds of rationales, illogical and strange as they may be. They even came right out and said that dental health should not be a priority because there is no crisis. This comes from the people who actually have dental coverage for themselves and their families.
Across the country, 500,000 children do not have access to dental care. Just so Conservative members know, here are the real facts of what is going on. Oral health is actually critical to our overall health. This goes beyond the risk of pain, infection and tooth decay. Particularly in young children, it could impact eating, sleep and growth. It could have long-lasting impacts into adulthood. In fact, oral health is linked to diabetes and respiratory illnesses. The most common surgery preformed on preschool children at most pediatric hospitals in Canada is treatment for dental decay.
The Conservatives may not care about people and the pain they may have to suffer through because they do not have access to dental services, but let me say this: They care about money. They talk about money all the time, not that they would ever stop to talk about ultrarich CEOs, who benefit from excessive bonuses and pandemic profitability. The Conservatives are not worried about those companies. They are not worried about the oil and gas industry, which last year alone made $147 billion. We will never hear them say that those companies should pay their share so those 500,000 children and families can actually get dental care. We will never hear that.
All they talk about is how we cannot afford it and about where the money will come from. The money to support people in Canada can come from the very people who have extra and excessive profits. That is what the New Democrats are here to fight for. Members can bet their bottom dollars that this is what I am here to fight for.
Let us talk about money for a minute. I do not know if any Conservative members know this, but 1% of people end up in the hospital because they do not have dental services. They end up in emergency. Just in British Columbia alone, the cost of that 1% is $155 million. That is just for one province. If we multiply that across the entire country, all the provinces and territories, it makes up all the money required to do this work and then some.
Imagine the pain and suffering that people have to go through. The Conservatives talk about dollars and cents, but they do not really think about them. When they speak, they say that dental care is not a crisis. My goodness. Really? Do we really want everybody to end up in the hospital, and then we can say let us do something about it?
The worst thing is they try to pit communities against communities. I heard them saying all day today that somehow, because there are insufficient funds to address mental health, we should not address dental health. What sort of twisted, illogical thinking is that? The New Democrats on this side of the House absolutely believe that there should be investments in mental health. In fact, we believe that head-to-toe care should be in place. We want to fight for pharmacare as well. We will go to the wall to fight for these things.
I cannot believe what I am hearing today from the Conservatives, including from their own leader, who has said in different places that dental care is not a priority. I have even heard Conservative members say that no constituents in their ridings need dental care. My goodness. I challenge them to validate that by way of proof that not one of their constituents needs dental care.
I want to turn for a minute to the housing issue, as I am also hearing twisted logic on housing.
Let us be clear. Earlier today I put on the record the distribution of how many people qualified for the housing benefit, province by province. It was to the tune of 1,785,600 people. They would qualify for this $500 one-time benefit. In Quebec, 568,800 would qualify for this benefit. It is the second-highest province by number of people who would qualify, so it is simply not true to say that Quebeckers would not get this benefit. They would.
I have to say that I admire Quebec from this perspective. When the federal Liberals cancelled the national affordable housing program in 1993, Quebec and British Columbia were the only two provinces that continued social housing and continued to build affordable housing and co-op housing, doing so by themselves. British Columbia did that. We also subsidize people who have that need. Now with an NDP government back in office there, it is investing significant amounts of money into housing.
Just because some people have safe, secure, affordable housing and rent that is geared to income does not mean we should leave everyone else behind. It does not mean we do not need to fight for them to get supports as well. I will go to my grave fighting for people to get that. As my mother has taught me, we need to lift each other up. As indigenous elders have taught me, we need one heart, one mind. That is what we have to do. People have been left behind, and just because I have made it does not mean we have made it. It means we have to work harder to bring everybody forward.
Once upon a time I lived in poverty. Once upon a time my parents made less than minimum wage to support us. Just because we are no longer living in poverty does not mean that I forget my history and background and all the people who were left behind. That is what this bill is all about. That is why the New Democrats are here, 24 of us, to force the government to take more action to support the people in this country.
We all deserve it. We want to be proud of who we are as Canadians. I ran for office to do a job, and that job is to fight for everyone so they are not left behind. Until that is done, the New Democrats will never rest. No matter what the Conservatives want to call us, or anyone else, it does not matter. At the end of the day, it is not about me; it is about the people. That is why we are here in this House.
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Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the Conservatives are loath to support this bill because they feel that all government spending is inflationary, even though economists have said that the amount of government spending in this bill would not cause inflationary pressure.
Does the member believe that providing dental care to children 12 and under would cause the price of dental care to go up?
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Mr. Speaker, it is, of course, absurd to say that supporting Canadians who need dental services and who cannot access them because they cannot afford them would cause dental services to increase in cost. It is absurd to even say that.
I think the reason the Conservatives are opposed to the bill is that their wealthy friends in the oil and gas sector already have dental services. The Conservatives are loath to support people who do not have it and hate to contribute to them so they too can have the health care services we all deserve.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleague's speech just now in the House and heard her speak earlier today. I think it was much the same speech, but we are at third reading now so I appreciate that we had to hear the speech twice.
I heard the member paraphrase what my colleagues and I, as I spoke to the bill today too, had to say about the bill, and it was a stretched paraphrase of what we put on the page about why we are opposed to the bill.
I am going to ask her one question. She talked about how everybody is screaming for this need, but there are 10 premiers across Canada, including her New Democratic premier in British Columbia, and none of them have asked the government for any support on dental care. There is a reason for that: It is in provincial jurisdiction and is meant to stay in provincial jurisdiction. However, the government, to appease the member's party, is putting something nice in the window so that its members can say, “That's why the NPD supports us.” It is, as I said earlier, a trinket.
Would the member ask her premier to please ask for this from the federal government before she stands up and says that it is something everybody is demanding?
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Mr. Speaker, it is not paraphrasing. The member for Cumberland—Colchester actually said on Monday at committee, “I think we've established very clearly that there's no dental dental crisis here”, as though the 500,000 children who do not have access to dental care are not faced with a crisis when they have dental pain and dental decay, miss school and end up in surgery, which costs more money that they cannot afford.
On the question of dental care and of health care overall, I have to say that it is a shared jurisdictional issue. That is what it is. The federal government has a responsibility for it, as do the provinces. We do not get to walk away and say that it is not about us, although that is what the Conservatives want to do. They want to close their eyes as though somehow dental services have nothing to do with the federal government. It is simply not true.
My constituents have said to me that they desperately need this service. They need it for their children, and seniors need it as well, as seniors have told me. I have met seniors who could not afford dental services and who have to blend their food into a drink because they do not have teeth to eat it. The member can tell my constituents that they do not need this plan.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear my colleague defend the poor. If she thinks that she is the only one from a poor background, I will tell her right away that artists are used to living on $20,000 or less a year. I know what I am talking about. We have many artists in Quebec.
We obviously listened carefully to her speech. The same cannot be said of my colleagues when my colleague from Joliette was speaking. At any rate, the best way to understand a situation that seems inequitable is to imagine oneself in the other person's situation. If my colleague put herself in the place of Quebeckers, who are being denied part of what they are entitled to, I think she would probably react just as strongly as she just did.
What does she think of Quebec's situation? How does she see it, knowing that there is a member from Quebec in her party?
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Mr. Speaker, what I know is that under this program, about 100,000 children in Quebec would actually benefit. What I know on the housing benefit is that over 500,000 Quebeckers would actually benefit.
From my perspective, it is not about me; it is about the people and their needs. This is what we are trying to address with the bill. We are trying to help as many people as possible across the country.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-31, the cost of living relief act. As the health critic for the NDP, I am particularly pleased to speak to the dental aspects of this legislation.
Over 50 years ago, Tommy Douglas used his influence in a minority Parliament in this House to build our public health care system. This made access to physician and hospital care a right of citizenship in Canada rather than a privilege. This cherished institution, our public health care system, defines us as a nation. It is an affirmation that we will take care of each other when we are at our most vulnerable. It is a reflection of our commitment to equality and justice.
However, our health care system is not perfect, and it is not complete. Many important health services remain uncovered across Canada. For these, patients remain at the mercy of their ability to pay. In this minority Parliament, Canada's New Democrats are once again putting progress ahead of partisanship to address one of the most glaring gaps in our public system, that of dental care.
Through our confidence and supply agreement with the government, New Democrats were able to compel the Liberals to commit to a national dental care program for uninsured individuals and families with an income of less than $90,000 per year, with no copayments whatsoever for anyone making under $70,000 annually. We intend to build a comprehensive dental plan that would permit millions of Canadians to get dental services equal to what other insured Canadians enjoy, and ultimately to fold dental care into our public health care system as a universal publicly insured benefit, which it was always intended to be.
The Canada dental benefit in this legislation is the first stage of this plan. It is a bridge payment that would allow children under 12 to get the dental care they need urgently while a comprehensive dental plan is developed by the end of 2023 for children under 18, seniors over 65 and people living with disabilities. That plan would then expand to all families in Canada with an income under $90,000 per year in 2025, covering an estimated nine million Canadians.
The Canada dental benefit would provide eligible parents or guardians with up to $1,300 in direct, upfront, tax-free payments to cover dental expenses for their children under 12 years old over the next 14 months. The target implementation date for the program is December 1, 2022, and it would cover expenses retroactive to October 1.
To access this benefit, parents or guardians would need to apply through the Canada Revenue Agency and attest that their child does not have access to private dental care insurance, that they will have out of pocket dental care expenses for which they would use the benefit, and that they understand they would need to retain documentation to verify that out of pocket dental care expenses occurred if required. There would be an effective audit and enforcement policy. Half a million kids across Canada would receive urgently needed investment for dental care.
Unmet oral health needs impose significant costs on other parts of our public health care system through hospital stays for dental emergencies, as well as the long-term impacts of poor oral health on systemic disease. This is particularly true for children, since good oral health practices in childhood serve as a foundation for the rest of a person's life. We know oral health is an essential component of overall health. Tooth decay remains the most common childhood chronic disease in Canada. It is the most common reason for Canadian children to undergo day surgery, and it is a leading cause for children missing school.
In addition to the pain and risk of an infection caused by tooth decay, it can also negatively impact a child's eating, sleeping and growth patterns while increasing the need for treatment later in life. Numbers cannot quantify the impacts of pain, the social impacts and economic losses suffered by people with untreated dental problems, yet today as we debate this bill in this House, over 35% of Canadians, some 13 million Canadians, have no dental insurance whatsoever, and nearly seven million Canadians who may even have it avoid going to the dentist every year because of the cost.
Unsurprisingly, this impacts low-income and marginalized Canadians the most. Canada's most vulnerable people have the highest rates of dental decay and disease and the worst access to oral health care services. According to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, 50% of low-income Canadians, along with the majority of seniors over the age of 60, have no dental coverage.
This is a serious public health issue. Untreated oral health issues lead to many serious conditions, such as cardiac problems, diabetes complications, low birth rates and fatal infections, not to mention the dental health effects of chronic pain, facial disfiguration and shame. That is why Canada's New Democrats have been driving the agenda forward on universal dental care for many years.
At their first meeting following the 2019 election, the leader of the NDP pressed the Prime Minister to work across party lines to implement dental care for all Canadians. I was pleased to see the government acknowledge this NDP priority in the 2019 Speech from the Throne and was heartened to see in the Minister of Health's mandate letter at that time a direction to “Work with Parliament to study and analyze the possibility of national dental care.” Unfortunately, the Liberal government failed to take any action on this commitment in the last Parliament.
In fact, when the New Democrats put forward a plan to fund a national dental care plan by taxing the windfalls reaped by pandemic profiteers and the ultrarich, the Liberals and Conservatives voted against that proposal. When my former caucus colleague Jack Harris introduced a motion in June 2021 to establish a federal dental care plan for uninsured Canadians with household incomes under $90,000 per year, like this plan, as a first step toward universal public dental care, again the Liberals and Conservatives voted it down.
Today, we have an opportunity finally to move forward on national dental care in Canada. We must not squander it. This will represent the single greatest expansion of public health care in a generation and the largest investment in oral health in Canadian history. To those MPs who oppose this initiative, I wish to remind them that every member of this House receives dental coverage for themselves and their families paid for by taxpayers. When they vote against this bill, they are taking taxpayer dollars to cover their teeth and are saying no to the poorest Canadians for theirs, and that is a shame of the most grotesque proportions.
I see people on the Conservative side showing us their teeth. That is disgusting.
For those who claim we simply cannot afford to establish an urgently needed program, let us look at some numbers. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that the Canada dental benefit will cost $703 million in total, and once fully implemented our national dental care plan will cost approximately $1.7 billion a year to provide coverage for nine million Canadians.
We currently spend about $309 billion every year on health care in Canada. This dental care plan represents less than 1% of that, and that does not account for the savings we will achieve due to fewer emergency room visits and avoided serious health complications from untreated oral health issues later in life.
Oral health is not a luxury; it is essential. Those who say we cannot afford dental care now because we have to fix our Canada health care system do not understand that oral health care is primary health care. We would never ask people what they would rather have, heart or cataract surgery, their broken leg fixed or hip surgery. Having one's mouth covered is as much a part of one's overall health as any other part of one's body.
To those who say that the provinces or territories already cover dental care, I say this: That is a myth. There is no province or territory that covers all citizens with no copays in a comprehensive way for people making under $70,000. Every program I have looked at in this country virtually without exception is poorly funded, incomplete and reserved for too few people.
It is time for us to put aside partisan differences. The mouth was always intended to be a part of our Canada health care system. It is only a historical anomaly that it is not. When Prime Minister Diefenbaker asked Justice Hall to recommend what should be in the Canada health care system in 1964, Justice Hall recommended that dental care be included. This is an over 50-year omission that we have the chance to rectify and the New Democrats are not going to stop until all Canadians can get their teeth fixed as a matter of right, just like they can with respect to every other necessary medical issue in this country.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my neighbour from Vancouver Kingsway for his long-time advocacy on this important issue.
We listen in this House to the Conservatives talk about having the best interests of Canadians at heart, but how do they align that with the hypocrisy of saying they are going to deny kids the right to dental care? I would love to get the member's sense of how that is possible or what it is that must be motivating folks to say they are going to deny children the very right and privilege to dental care that all of us in this House have for ourselves and our families.
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Mr. Speaker, I remember the words of J.S. Woodsworth, who said, “What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all.” I think that this is an excellent guiding principle as a matter of good citizenship and good governance.
If I flip that around, I think of the utter hypocrisy of people in the House voting against providing dental care to Canada's poorest citizens, while they themselves get their teeth fixed, their spouses' teeth fixed and their children's teeth fixed, not paid for by them but paid for by the taxpayers. The leader of the official opposition has been in the House since he was 25 years old. He has been having his teeth fixed, paid for by the taxpayers, since he was 25, and he is going to stand in the House and say that people who make under $70,000 should not have dental insurance.
Seniors over 65, do we know how many seniors over 65 make under $70,000 a year and have no dental insurance? Almost all of them. That is who the NDP is going to bring dental care to. I want to know what Conservatives will say to them next election.
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Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed my friend's speech on this side of the House. I do have some questions for him on the applicability of an actual dental care system. This is a dental payout system. Dental care systems exist in all 10 provinces right now, including in my province of Alberta, where we did some extensive research. All poor people below a certain threshold are covered 100% for dental expenses in Alberta. I think there is much the same system in many of the provinces across Canada. Some are more; some are less. This is an overlap system just to give money to people.
I would ask my colleague if he would consider a better system, as opposed to an overlapping system that is going to be highly bureaucratic and inefficient. Would he actually look, perhaps, at just giving some extra funding to the provincial systems that are not meeting what we sees as the requirements people are missing out on in dental care in Canada at this point?
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Mr. Speaker, I had the benefit of sitting in on a round table meeting that had not only the Canadian Dental Association but representatives from every province and territory of the country, including Alberta.
This is what they told me about Alberta. They said that Alberta has an existing low-income and seniors program but, like Ontario, the coverage is poor. Dentists do not accept most patients or they ration patients. They said there are 750,000 visits to hospitals every year in Alberta for people who are accessing dental care. They said they need $4 billion to treat all untreated cavities in the province of Alberta. That does not sound like there is a very good program in Alberta to me.
One of the myths is about the 10 provinces and territories that do have programs. I have met with all of them. None of them have a good program. There are gaps in coverage. There are high copays. What they really do is that they dump the cost onto dental professionals and they pay substandard rates to dentists, denturists and dental hygienists so that they are actually subsidizing the poor coverage that is already there. The plan that we are talking about is a normative plan for all Canadians that is as good as my hon. colleague's plan is.
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Mr. Speaker, I thought it was a shame that so much chatter was going on in the corner while my colleagues from Mirabel and Joliette were giving their brilliant speeches. Members will still go ahead and ask my two colleagues questions on issues that were covered in great detail in their speeches. Then members will ask how my colleagues can say this or that. My first point is that members should have been listening rather than talking.
My question is this: why the super closure motion?
If the Liberals are so sure of their arguments, in other words, that they are not encroaching on any jurisdictions, that Quebec's jurisdictions are not being trampled, that a right of withdrawal with compensation is therefore unnecessary, that everything is hunky-dory and Ottawa knows best, if that were the case, we could have gone through the committee process. We could have done real committee work and done a real study with the experts, including all those who say that the plan falls short. If they are experts in their fields, the committee could have scrutinized their arguments.
Why are the Liberals so afraid of democracy? Why come and shove this super closure motion down our throats?
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is worried about rushing the bill through Parliament. Dental care has been recommended to be part of our Canada health care system since 1964. I think that Canadians have waited long enough.
Second of all, I was at the health committee the other night when we had every opportunity to put in amendments and, in fact, the Bloc Québécois did put two amendments into the legislation. One of them was to have every province opt out, which, of course, defeats the entire purpose of the program.
Let me read what the Quebec member of the Canadian Dental Association told us. Quebec has a very basic program for kids under 10. There are a lot of procedures not covered. It is poorly funded. Dentists are subsidizing that program. They do not want the transfer to go to the province and they prefer the federal program.
Why does the hon. member want children in Quebec whose families make under $70,000 not to get $1,300, starting in a month or two, so that they can go to the dentist for dental exams, for cleanings, for X-rays and to get their teeth filled? Why would he stand in the way of that for Quebec families? I wonder what he says to them.
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Mr. Speaker, folks who are watching this debate are seeing political theatrics at its best. We just heard from the member for Vancouver East and the member for Vancouver Kingsway. The member for Vancouver East has been in office for 29 years, and the member for Vancouver Kingsway since 2008, and prior to that he worked for a union, so they both have had dental care.
The member for Vancouver Kingsway brought up a good point that, at the health committee, members from the opposition did bring amendments through. Our hon. colleague from the Bloc brought some great amendments through. He is the member for Mirabel. We then saw the costly coalition gang up and deny these amendments, just like they do all the other times.
As a matter fact, they were ruled out of order, yet the NDP amendments were ruled in order. This did not take place until the next day, but the Speaker of the House actually had to rule those amendments out of order, yet we still see the political theatrics of this group. It really is shameful.
Let me begin by saying there is not one member in His Majesty's official opposition who does not believe Canadian families need more help. There is not one person in my party who does not want to see Canadians' lives get easier and more affordable. There is not one member of our party who does not want to see life made easier for kids and parents. No one on this side believes kids should not have access to dental care.
We have heard all kinds of accusations from the Liberal-NDP coalition today on this, and it is absolute hogwash. I would use stronger language, because them speaking kind of gets me—
An hon. member: It triggers you.
Mr. Todd Doherty: Mr. Speaker, “triggers” is a good word.
An hon. member: No one is triggered but you.
Mr. Todd Doherty: Mr. Speaker, they trigger it, but that is what they want. That is exactly what they want—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Oct/27/22 6:16:04 p.m.
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Order, please. Let us try to take the temperature down a little bit. I do not have a big list of speakers, and I want to make sure the ones who are left have the opportunity to present, just like everyone else had the opportunity during this debate.
The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George has the floor.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate that, because while the Liberals will go on and on saying that people are heckling them, you will notice that I did not even acknowledge them. They can say anything they want to say. It does not bother me at all, because what they are saying is total hogwash. They are triggering. What Bill C-31 is called in the political sphere is a wedge issue, because Liberals are using it to score political points.
The new Conservative leader went out of his way to tell Canadians that we care for them. We want to let everyday, regular people know that we actually have a plan and we care. We want people to have more money in their pockets. What we have seen from the Liberal government and the NDP, which has propped the Liberals up all the way, is that they are going to triple the price for food, triple the price for fuel and triple the price for heating. Yes, members heard that correctly, and I will repeat it for the Liberal-NDP coalition. Its members are going to triple, triple, triple prices. I know they hate that, so I said it again.
Conservatives want life to be more affordable. What is shameful is that we know our friends in Atlantic Canada are struggling after having just gone through a horrendous natural disaster, a weather event. They are struggling. Liberal premiers in Atlantic Canada are begging the government to please cancel raising the carbon tax, because they are struggling.
We also know from a report that was just released today that 1.5 million Canadians accessed food banks last month. That is an increase of 35% year over year. That is happening under the Liberal government's watch. When we tell Liberals that, they blame everybody else but themselves.
I will agree that inflation can be caused by a number of things, including foreign issues, but it starts at home. The government has the keys to the bank. As our friend from Regina—Qu'Appelle said in his great speech, it starts here at home. Over $176 billion of spending that Liberals say was for COVID had nothing to do with COVID, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report states that today.
We do not want to see people evicted, and we do not want to see kids suffering in pain because they cannot afford a dentist. We have focused the majority of our questions in question period, since electing our new leader, on affordability. While the Liberals and NDP want to spend, spend, spend, we have been talking about making an actual difference in people's lives.
Bill C-31 is not about providing access to dental care or making rent more affordable. It is about maintaining power. Let us be very clear that it is about the Prime Minister's tenuous, at best, hold on his party. There are wolves at the door. They are lining up, getting their soldiers and their organization together to take over power and be the next leaders of the Liberal Party, because the Prime Minister is struggling to hold on to his power.
It is about an NDP leader who is also struggling with his own internal party politics. If members of the NDP-Liberal coalition were concerned about dental care or rent, they would have wanted a fulsome debate at committee. They would have wanted a fulsome debate here in this chamber. They would have wanted to ensure the best legislation possible.
Let me throw this out. This is not a plan or a program. Programs have checks and balances in place, and this has none. Legislation that would create a program to help kids who are in pain and that would help single moms pay their rent or go to a dentist is a program. This is not the case.
I have been a member of Parliament for seven years and have sat in on countless bill reviews. I have sat in on countless committee meetings, and what I witnessed Monday night was unbelievable. My colleague from Mirabel will attest to this.
What we saw was that the government gave committee members literally two hours to study a piece of legislation, two hours that will commit the Canadian government to $10 billion of spending. In fact, just talking right now about this actually triggers me even more. It makes me more angry.
The government voted down my hon. colleague from Mirabel's amendments for a certain clause for the reason that committees cannot attach further financial obligations to the government. The amendments were voted down, yet when the NDP brought amendments to this piece of legislation to committee with attached financial obligations, the chair ruled those in order. As a matter of fact, the Liberals and the NDP rammed them through.
As parliamentarians we have a job to do. We were sent here by the people from our ridings to represent them. We were sent here to get the best legislation possible. We were sent here to work together. I have stood in the House so much over this time to talk about mental health and to talk about health. I think all colleagues will agree I take a very non-partisan approach to this. If we can work together to get things done that is the best for Canadians.
What we have seen with the government and its friends, the NDP, the costly Liberal-NDP coalition, is that they do not care what the rest of us and the rest of Canadians think. They will stand in the House and put on a great show for video clips and social media, yet they are misleading Canadians every step of the way.
I understand that partisan politics can get in the way. I know that when we are in this chamber sometimes the level of debate get pretty low. That said, I have always believed in the committee process. I have always believed that committees are where we as parliamentarians do our best work. At least, that is what I had hoped.
I remember a time at the fisheries committee a few years ago when there were a number of amendments that we thought would make the bill better. At that time I was getting up daily in question period to hammer the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans on the clam scam. Does everybody remember the clam scam? It was when the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans gave a lucrative contract to a former member of Parliament, a former Liberal member of Parliament, and possibly even some family members of the fisheries minister.
That meant that jobs were lost in the community at Grand Bank. I fought tirelessly for them and not one member from the Atlantic Canada caucus stood up to do that. Why? It was because they were silenced. They were muzzled by the front bench.
When the bill came to committee with some amendments, I reached out to the hon. members from across the way and told them some of our concerns. We were at it every day in question period, but when it came to getting that bill right, we actually got the work done. We got those amendments passed. That is an example of a committee working in the best interests of Canadians.
At committee, the members were listened to. We heard from over 20 witnesses. We heard from the minister. We heard from officials. When it came to doing the clause-by-clause, the members of the committee agreed with some of our amendments and we managed to pass a number of them. We worked together to have a better piece of legislation and Canadians were better for it. Did we get everything we wanted? No, we did not, but we got a few. We had an opportunity to actually study the bill, not like what we saw on Monday night.
We were told we had to have the amendments in before we actually got a chance to hear from the witnesses. On Monday we were supposed to analyze a bill that was going to spend, as I said, $10 billion. Do members know how many days we were allowed to study that bill? It was one day for two hours. Do members know how many witnesses we had? We had five, with two ministers who could not answer a question if their lives depended on it. They could not answer these questions. When we offered thoughtful questions to the officials, they were stymied. It was two hours and then we had to immediately move into clause-by-clause. Was that really offering parliamentarians of all stripes an opportunity to do their best work for Canadians? I would offer that it was not. It was very discouraging.
I get that the Liberal-NDP coalition members do not care about inflation. They do not care about budgets. They do not care about robbing Peter to pay Paul. They do not really care about families. They think the government has this magic pot of gold or magic pot of money that all this money comes from, or perhaps it is a tree. It is probably not a tree, but seriously, this is such an utter sham. It really, truly is, and it is more of what we see with this Liberal-NDP coalition.
The worst part of all this is that the Liberal and NDP members of the committee attempted to usurp the government's power and increase the spending. I mentioned that. Members heard me correctly. After a negative ruling by the chair on two Bloc amendments, if I remember correctly, that would have increased spending, the coalition members introduced an NDP amendment to spend even more than $10 billion. There was no consultation, no cabinet approval and no authorization. They just agreed to add more money. When the chair ruled them out of order, they challenged the chair and they rammed it through. We voted them down and they amended the bill anyway. Of course, we objected. We pointed out that this would require a royal recommendation, but they did not want to hear that.
They did not want to debate dental care for kids. They did not want to debate money for rent. The Liberal members of the committee supported the NDP amendment because they did not want to lose power. They did not want to jeopardize their agreement with the third party. The fix was in before the bill even came to committee. The fix was in to get this passed without scrutiny, without accountability and without care for kids and families.
When the member for Vancouver East moved her amendment to increase the rental eligibility, the chair correctly ruled the motion inadmissible. The House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states this on page 772. I know I do not have to tell you this, Mr. Speaker, but I am going to read it into the record anyway. It states:
Since an amendment may not infringe upon the financial initiative of the Crown, it is inadmissible if it imposes a charge on the public treasury, or if it extends the objects or purposes or relaxes the conditions and qualifications specified in the royal recommendation.
Despite this clear and concise ruling, the Liberals and NDP voted down the chair and proceeded, regardless. It was not until the bill was reported back to the House on Tuesday that the mistake was fixed.
I am going to finish with this. The Canadian Dental Association said this:
The single best way to quickly improve oral health and increase access to dental care is to invest in, and enhance, existing provincial and territorial dental programs. These programs are significantly underfunded and are almost exclusively financed by provincial and territorial governments.
We are surprised by today’s announcement that the federal government is considering a new, large-scale, federal dental program. It will be important to ensure that any new initiatives do not disrupt access to dental care for the large majority of Canadians who already have dental coverage through employer-provided health benefits.
The Liberal member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River summed it up best on Monday night with his second question. He admitted that this bill was nothing really about dental care. He said this:
There are a lot of costs in life. Dental is certainly one of them, but you have to buy your kid shoes, you have to buy them food and you have to pay for their minor league hockey. These are all costs for families.
I do not disagree with the member. Families could always use more money, and we could use a program that has checks and balances in place so that this money would actually get to kids and families who need it the most, and so that it would be consistent and not a one-time top-up that the government is going to claw back anyway. We also heard through our study that first nations children are not eligible for this program.
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